Four Questions
by nwhepcat
Summary: Giles and Faith have their first chance to talk since her release from prison. S7-based AU.


Giles and Faith have their first chance to talk since her release from prison. It doesn't go the way either expected.   
  
Rated PG-3 for language.  
SPOILERS: Season 7 up through "Storyteller," then into an AU in which Faith has been released from prison and has not gone to L.A. Xander is recovering from a near-fatal battle with the Bringers.   
  
DISCLAIMER: Joss and ME own the characters. No copyright infringement intended, no profits forthcoming.  
  
FEEDBACK: Yes, please! If you wish to archive it or link to it, please ask.   
  
THANKS TO: Raincitygirl for inspiring the questions. Herself for launching the ship.  
FOUR QUESTIONS  
Faith has crossed this threshold any number of times in the last couple of weeks, but this time it feels like she's standing at a border. It's not as though Giles's will be the first hostile face she's seen since she got back. But his disapproval carries more weight. Rupert Giles is Richard Wilkins's opposite number; not in the whole boring Good vs. Evil way, but something more important. Rupert could have been to her what Wilkins was -- mentor, father figure. But he hadn't offered her quite the same deal. No unconditional adoration -- Giles expected her to earn his approval, and she fell way short.   
  
Pausing at the door, Faith sucks in a deep breath. Xander, leaning on his cane behind her, touches her briefly at the small of her back. It gives her courage.   
  
When they enter, Giles is sitting alone in the parlor (*"paaaaah-luh," the potentials shriek in glee whenever she says it out loud*), one hand to his face, his glasses dangling from the fingers of the other.   
  
Willow is rounding the corner from the dining room, carrying a tray with teapot and cups. "Hey, I'm glad you finally made it," she says quietly to Xander and Faith. "He's pretty jet-lagged." She kneels to set the tray on the coffee table, talking loud enough to wake Giles while not letting on she knows he's asleep. "So I hope English breakfast is okay. I mean, you're English, which works out great, but it's so not breakfast hour. Unless it is, Bombay-time, then we're good."  
  
Giles rouses and puts on his glasses, and Faith is relieved that it's Xander his gaze falls on first. His haggard face lights up and he surges to his feet. "Good God. Xander. I'm delighted to see you looking so well." He charges over, hand extended for a manly British handclasp, but then he changes the plan, embracing Xander instead. Much Anglo/American male back-thumping. "Willow made things sound rather grave."  
  
"They were," Xander says, instead of making a joke. "I'm lucky. Faith, actually, has a lot to do with that." He puts his arm around her and draws her to his side.   
  
"Hello, Faith," Giles says neutrally.  
  
She's filled with gratitude, though, for his obvious love of Xander, and it calms her nerves. "Good seeing you, Rupert."  
  
He takes in Xander's arm over her shoulder, decides to misinterpret. "Here, Xander, you must sit."  
  
He does -- they all do. Xander slings his arm over the back of the sofa, lightly resting his hand on the back of her neck. At this moment she loves him more than she could possibly say.   
  
In many ways, Giles looks little changed from when she first met him. The same Sgt. Rock chin and slightly prissy mouth, a contrast that always cracked her up. Tweeds, wire-rimmed glasses, slightly pinched look of worry -- she never had determined whether that was a trait of the English or just watchers -- all as she remembered. But he's aged in the last three years. No surprise, she supposes, considering the death of his slayer and his favorite protege's balls-out plunge into evil. What Willow put him through physically was in itself enough to mark him permanently.  
  
"So did you bring us another potential to squeeze in upstairs?" Faith asks.  
  
"No," he says, and a few more years seem to press upon him. "The Bringers got there first."  
  
"Shit," Xander murmurs. Faith feels a slight tremor ripple through his muscles.   
  
"It was all very carefully orchestrated so I'd arrive just moments after they'd left."  
  
Xander shifts on the couch, rubbing his injured leg. "I hate to say it, but we've all fought an enemy this sadistic before. Who leads us around by the nose and plants --" Something he sees in Giles's face brings him to a halt. After a pause he continues, "I say no more chasing after new potentials. This thing wants us split up. If it can't do it psychologically, it'll do it physically. It's time we stopped giving the First what it wants."  
  
"He's right," Faith says.  
  
Giles is silent for a moment, exhaustion seeming to roll off him in waves. "Yes. I believe he is." He sets his tea cup down. "I think perhaps a walk would revive me."   
  
"But don't you think you should --" Willow cuts herself off as he gets to his feet.  
  
He lifts an eyebrow and says, "Faith?" and without comment she accompanies him out the door.  
  
The next-door neighbor is home from work, getting out of his car as she cuts across the lawn to the sidewalk. Faith raises an arm in greeting as she waits for Giles, who travels via the front walk. "Bless you, Brother Randy. His time is coming, hallelujah." Randy scurries inside his house.  
  
Giles fixes her with a look and Faith grins. "Just a little friendly chain-yanking. He thinks we're a doomsday cult."  
  
"And whyever would he think such a thing?" he says drily.  
  
"Oh, Xander might've told him." She sees the curtains twitch as Mrs. Randy checks them out, and Faith waves. "He needs something to do, Giles. He's got talents that are going to waste around here, and the stakes are too high for that to be okay. He'll never say anything to Buffy, and I can't -- that would be the end of the subject, now and forever."  
  
"I'll speak with her. She takes too much on herself, and it's only grown worse these last months."  
  
"Make it soon," she says. She surprises herself, laying down orders to Giles. Another thing she'll do for Xander's sake, it seems. "Something's eating at him. I don't know what, not yet, but he's better when he's focused on someone else."   
  
"Things have progressed rather quickly between you and Xander."  
  
"It might seem that way to you," she says, "but from where we stand it feels like months."  
  
"I'd just hope that you'd--"  
  
Faith cuts in. "Be careful? Not hurt him? Way ahead of you."  
  
Something, apparently, tells him not to pursue it. They walk, and she can feel him working around to whatever his purpose is for this stroll. She could wait, but she has her own agenda. "I wrote you a dozen letters when I was in prison," she says.  
  
Giles looks at her, startled. "I never received a one."  
  
"I know." She smiles, but knows it looks pained. She wishes he'd turn his attention elsewhere. "I never sent any of them."  
  
He doesn't answer for a moment. "Soul searching is never an easy thing."  
  
"Gets easier when you've got three years or so to do nothin' else. You might not get good at answers, but you can become frickin' wicked at questions. Some you keep for yourself, some are for the people who are important to you. If you're lucky, you might get to ask some of those, maybe of someone who has answers."  
  
This appeals to Giles, who's made a career of having the answers. "If there's anything I can clarify for you--"  
  
One of the neighbor dogs, a border collie with a red bandanna around his neck, comes to sniff at her ankles. Faith drops to her heels to rub her hands along his sides. "One of the big searches I've had for my soul is to find what makes it so difficult to--" *love*, she wants to say -- "to look after." She murmurs to the collie, gives it a last pat on its flank and comes to her feet. "Oh, I know I'm a handful. Always have been."   
  
They resume walking and she keeps her gaze on the sidewalk ahead, the houses along the way and the kids pinballing across their front yards -- anywhere but Giles. "You get in prison, and you hear everyone's story. Then you start putting things together, seeing how things look from outside. Context, the big picture, whatever. And so I start asking, why's a girl who's gone to her protectors -- and a minor, don't forget -- living at the Hot Sheets Spa and Resort? Why is it that the first person to see I need a decent place to live and the occasional real meal is the guy who's planning to eat the entire population of Sunnydale? How do the crazy rogue watchers and the wet work division know how to find me, but the Council can't seem to send me a watcher of my own? I've gotta think it's me, something I did or didn't do, because for about five minutes there, you thought I was the shit. So how did I fall through the cracks?" Her hands are in the pockets of her jacket, the nails biting half moons into her palms. "Something I did, something I was. Something changed everything, and I still can't put my finger on it."  
  
She chances a glance at him now, and has to look away. There's dawning realization, followed by defeat and horror and pity all mixed together -- the same expression he had when he spoke of the slaughtered potential in Bombay. Part of her feels sorry for him. The rest (a lot more of her) wants to fucking slap him. *How can this be news to you?*  
  
"It was what you were," Giles says, his voice half strangled.  
  
She thought nothing could wound her further, but she was wrong. The words are a blow as savage as the vampire's chain slash in last night's fight, and just as completely rob her of her breath. She stumbles to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk.  
  
Giles turns to face her. "You were too much like me."  
  
Faith laughs, but that doesn't feel like what's happening in her chest.  
  
"It's true." He begins walking again, and Faith is forced to tag along. "I went through a wild, dark period in my youth. My destiny was laid out for me from the time I was a child, and I rebelled against my training. I did stupid things, called on forces I couldn't control. People died because of what I did. When I saw that same sort of wildness in you, I backed away." He stops once more, his gaze searching her face. "I'm so terribly sorry. I failed you in so many ways."  
  
Here it is, what Faith has wanted for so long now, handed to her on a silver platter. And she doesn't know what to do with it. She shrugs. "Water under the bridge. Over the dam. However that fucking expression goes."  
  
They walk for blocks in silence. When they're back in sight of Buffy's house, Faith says, "Guess I hijacked your conversation. What was it you wanted to talk to me about?"  
  
A bitter laugh from Giles. "Oh, it was a wonderful post-prison speech, really. All about how I'd had a troubled past too, and rose above it. Filled with inspiration about how you could be -- a grand failure -- like me." Now it's Giles who refuses to make eye contact, even a sideways glance.   
  
"Well, you make it sound so appealing," she says breezily.  
  
He manages a laugh, however brief, that sounds almost real. Faith cuts across the lawn toward Buffy's front porch, and after the slightest hesitation, he steps onto the grass and walks by her side. 


End file.
